


These Little Wonders

by youreyestheyglow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically just your basic reincarnation oneshot but like over a really long period of time</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Little Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning: Spoilers!!** Basically if you've only seen the anime and have no idea what comes after this is gonna ruin the whole thing for you so don't read it

"I don't like it."

"I don't like it."

"This one doesn't even have a washing machine."

"No."

"You couldn't pay me to walk in there."

So you can understand why I was so excited when we finished a tour of an apartment and Levi looked at me, smiled, and nodded.

I kissed him and he laughed. "Yeah, yeah, we've got a place of our own. It's not that exciting." But he's smiling at me and I know he's just as excited as I am. Between his old housemates Erwin, Hanji, Mike, and Nanaba, and my housemates Armin and Mikasa, it had been nearly impossible to be alone together. Ever. At all. An apartment of our own was the greatest thing that had happened to us since we met.

I kissed his nose and he just smiled at me.

 

Moving in was a pain in the ass.

"Are you okay if we bring the couch in? I don't -"

"Erwin, it's fine, it's not like we have stuff between the cushions -"

"Not yet, we don't," Levi mutters as he passes me carrying a box of books.

"Ohhh, not yet? What does that mean?" Hanji shrieks, popping out of nowhere. "What are you planning on hiding down there?"

"Hanji, where'd you put the dishes -" Armin runs out of the kitchen and smacks into me and suddenly he's got a hand over his nose and -

"Armin if we lose our security deposit because you dripped blood on the floor -" I yell as he runs back into the kitchen, searching for a paper towel for his now-bleeding nose.

"If you lose your security deposit it'll be because we drop this table and it smashes through the floor," Mikasa yells through gritted teeth as she backs through the doorway into the apartment. She and Nanaba have your kitchen set, still in the box, and you run over and try to find a handhold to help them lift it, but it's a flat fucking box, what are you supposed to do?

Nanaba jerks her head over your shoulder and you take the hint and go grab another box.

 

You kick them out four hours later.

Your apartment is a mess. Boxes are strewn all over the floor, nothing's unpacked, and partially-assembled furniture litters the room.

But Levi looks at you and grins, and when he lifts up his hand there's a bottle of lube in it.

You forget about the mess and the amount of work in front of you and dive on him.

Half an hour later, he sticks the bottle in between the couch cushions before kissing you, hand fisted in your hair and nose brushing yours. "Don't tell Hanji it's down there."

"Why would I tell Hanji it's down there?"

He grimaces. "She has a way of pulling these things out of people."

 

It took Hanji a week to break me.

Levi admitted he was impressed. He thought she'd break me after a day or two.

 

I got used to wandering around in my underwear.

I'm not sure how it started - probably just me being too lazy to get dressed - but one day I realized it was eleven at night and I'd never gotten dressed. It was just easier. It meant less laundry. Levi didn't seem to care, so I didn't care, either.

It was on one of these days when it hit me.

I was walking into the kitchen and suddenly - I wasn't.

Or.

I was.

But I didn't know why.

I couldn't breathe.

Where was I? What was I doing? I was in my underwear, what would happen if we were attacked? I didn't have the luxury of walking around in my underwear what if someone saw me what if we needed to leave we had training soon we had to go I had to get dressed where am I and how do I get back to -

It was the Corporal who found me, who grabbed my hand when I instinctively shoved my fist against my chest in a salute. It was the Corporal who shushed me when I tried to speak, who tapped out a steady beat against my palm until I could breathe properly again.

His presence confused me, but I found it comforting. If Corporal was here, I'd be all right.

He sat me down at the table and used a strange machine to produce coffee. His clothing was strange, too - soft, loose pants and a shirt that looked like it was my size instead of his. He sat down across from me.

He spoke in a language I didn't understand, and when I answered him, his eyebrows pulled together, deepening his perpetual frown. He didn’t try to speak after that.

Why wasn’t he speaking? Why couldn’t he understand me? Why couldn’t I understand him? Was there something wrong with me? Was I dying? Oh, fuck, I was dying, I was dying and he couldn’t tell me and -

“Eren, Eren -” Corporal’s eyes were wide with concern as he slid out of his seat and came to kneel next to me.

He held my hand.

He didn’t say anything but my name.

It was the only thing I could understand.

Things trickled back in slowly, starting with his name. I didn’t have to call him Corporal, I could call him Levi. Just Levi. “Levi.”

He looked up at me and said something, and I shook my head. I still couldn’t understand him.

Words trickled in, one at a time. Keurig. Microwave. Refrigerator. All the strange things surrounding me that had no place existing had names, and I used them all.

It only took three minutes for the whole of the English language to slip back into my brain.

“Levi, what - what’s -”

He stood, but only so that he could fall into my lap, wrapping his arms around me in a hug. “You did damn good, kid. Damn good.”

God, it was a relief to understand his words again.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Past life flashback.”

“What?” I curl my hands around my warm mug. “Levi, what’s going on?”

Levi fidgets with his fingers. It’s been a long time since he was nervous enough to do that - he did it when he met me, when he met Mikasa, and when he met Armin. I’d wondered if he was just shy, but he spoke to most people without a hint of anxiety.

Now, though, it was a sign that something was wrong. Clearly.

“When I met you, I asked you if you believed in reincarnation.”

I frowned. I vaguely remembered that - he’d slipped it into conversation. We’d been discussing religion. “I said no.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t say no for a reason. Eren, I -” Levi huffed and ran his hand through his hair. “Erwin told me. A year after I started having them, he found out and told me what was going on. Sat me down and told me everything. It was years before I could look at him without seeing -” He bites his lip. “I’m sorry.”

I wish I could urge him on, but all that comes out is a whispered little “Levi.”

He takes a deep breath. “We lived, before. We lived in a time where humans turned into enormous creatures, titans, who couldn’t be reasoned with, couldn’t be spoken to, could barely be fought. They were huge, Eren, anywhere from seven to fifteen meters tall, and our ancestors built walls to keep them out. Walls, three concentric circles, arranged so that even if one fell, the inner walls could keep people safe. And for years, we were safe, inside those walls. I was part of the Survey Corps - the ones who went outside, who fought titans, who tried, again and again, to defeat the titans, to gain some knowledge about them, about the outside world. We were the ones who wanted to leave.

“You became one of us. You trained, with Armin and Mikasa - and a bunch of your friends, actually - Jean, Marco, Reiner, the Sweaty kid - to become a soldier. A member of the Survey Corps. And you managed it. Just in time for a 60 meter-tall titan to come along and smash a hole through the walls.

“Everything went to hell after that.” He reached for my mug and took a sip of the lukewarm coffee before passing it back to me. “Suddenly, the Survey Corps wasn’t that troupe of idiots who got themselves killed and wasted government money. We were the only ones who could fight the titans, the only ones who could take them down and save people.” He smiles at me. “You were what we started calling a titan shifter. You could change into a titan and then separate your consciousness from it so that we could cut you out of its neck. You saved people, Eren, so many people. Nearly all of your friends. Most of humanity, honestly. You were a hero. Humanity’s Last Hope.”

“Nearly? Nearly all of my friends?”

“Marco. But - you weren’t even there, Eren, you couldn’t have -” He reaches for my hand, but I barely feel it.

I let Marco die.

Marco, the sweet, friendly, calm boy who sat in the front of my English class in high school, who kept us out of trouble and knew when to tell us to grow the fuck up. Marco, who ended up getting me my first job, who stood next to me and flipped burgers until someone recognized that he was amazing at everything he did, and handed him a better job. Marco. I let Marco die. I let Marco die, I let him die, I let him die -

“Eren,” Levi says softly, “There was nothing you could’ve done to prevent it. Nothing anyone could’ve done. Trust me.”

I nod mechanically. “Keep - keep going.” Please, just - don’t - don’t make me think about this.

“There’s not much more to say. You got kidnapped a bunch of times. That girl who works in the cubicle next to yours, Christa - she got kidnapped a bunch of times too. She was the heir to the throne and you were the only titan shifter on our side, and there were plenty who thought you shouldn’t exist.”

“On our side? There were more?”

“Reiner, Bertholt, Annie. Ymir, although Ymir was more of a wild card.”

“They - fought against - ?”

“Forced to.”

Reiner. We called him Auntie Reiner straight through high school. He just - he was like that cool aunt that everyone has, the one who’ll pass you condoms with a wink and a nudge when he sees you looking at that kid you hate with a passion that isn’t just hatred anymore. The one who would look you in the eye and tell you that your relationship with that kid you hate, rocky from the start, isn’t getting better, and that it’s time for you to be just friends.

The one who looked me in the eye when he met my new boyfriend, a decade older than I was, and told me that he was good for me.

Bertl, Reiner’s shy boyfriend, the quiet Uncle to Reiner’s extroverted Aunt. Who passed me his homework with a sigh when I forgot mine. Who knew the answer to every question the teacher asked, and would be absolutely terrified to raise his hand and say it, but who would answer the question if it meant letting another kid off the hook. Who stayed pinned to Reiner’s side every day until one day, they were holding hands, and Reiner was walking with a swagger he’d never had before. Bertl, who had guided me - and most of my class - through every year of school until we’d graduated.

Annie, the quiet, pissy-looking blonde who got teased once for being small. She beat the kid up and got suspended, but no one ever made fun of her again.

She taught me how to fight when people started making fun of you for your eyes - one was grey and the other gold. She’d been the first person to look at me and tell me I should fight for my eyes. I was one of the few people she didn’t look at with absolute hatred. I had so much respect for her I couldn’t even put it into words.

And Ymir. Christa’s girlfriend. A sarcastic, snarky, pushy, aggressive, offensive little asswad, who nonetheless would jump to a friend’s defense in a heartbeat. Who switched between uncaring and protective so fast it made my head spin.

Actually, her wild card status made sense, if I’m being honest with myself. Her only real attachment was to Christa.

I knew them. I knew all four of them.

I knew Armin and Mikasa better than I knew my real family. I worked with Christa on nearly every project I had. I lost my virginity to Jean. I still kept up with him and Marco and Reiner and Bertl and Annie and talked to them on a regular basis. “Who else? Who else was there?”

Levi’s kind enough not to mention the way my voice cracks at the end. “Sasha Braus. Connie Springer. Thomas Wagner. Mina Carolina…” The list went on. I knew them all. Franz. Hanna. Hitch. Marlow. Names I saw on a regular basis. People I spoke to weekly. People I grew up with, people I graduated with, people I went to college with. So many people.

It almost occurred to me to ask Levi if he was lying. To force him to tell me he was being a dick. To make him laugh at me for believing him.

But I can’t.

Because there was a moment, just a moment, where I expected to see them all. Where I expected to fight by their sides. Where I was ready to throw on my uniform and join them in a battle I knew all too well.

I don’t remember what happened after that.

Things went blurry. Levi says I passed out.

I stayed home from work the next day.

It was too much for me.

 

Things slowly returned to normal - well, as normal as they could.

I had more flashbacks, and began to learn how to handle them, how to remind myself of where I was, how to find a quiet place to let them pass.

They became more vivid, somehow. Surreal. I was in my office, in my little cubicle - and then I was sitting on something hot and wet, stretching forward, reaching for Armin, refusing to look anywhere but his familiar, terrified face, and then there was a gasp of indescribable pain and terror like I’d never known - and I was in my cubicle again. I’d snapped a pen in half.

I learned that my first flashback, terrifying as it had been, had been mild. Easy. The lite version. Just disorientation, nothing like the full-blown auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile hallucinations that struck so often.

I learned to recognize it when it happened to others.

We didn’t say anything about them to each other. Just - got each other someplace quiet. Distracted anyone around whoever was having a flashback. Brought each other coffee, tea, water, soda, anything to wash out the sour taste the hallucinations left behind.

 

And I settled into it.

 

Levi asked me to marry him.

I knew it was coming.

I cried anyway.

 

When I told Mikasa, she just stared at me. “It took him that long to propose?”

 

Our wedding guests consisted entirely of people I’d seen in my flashbacks.

I cried once and got cake on Levi’s nose.

They were all there, though. All smiling at me. All on my side. Reiner, who had tied me to a tree in a past life and kidnapped me, encouraging me to smash the whole cake into Levi’s face. Bertl, who had kicked a hole through a wall and destroyed so many people’s sense of peace and security, quietly congratulated me and wished me a happy marriage. Annie, whose face I’d punched in after she’d killed so many of Levi’s friends, nodding at Levi as he passed her.

Mikasa, my sister, smiling at me as I dance with her instead of my dead mother. Armin, my best man, toasting us and blushing the whole time, still a little nervous about giving a speech in front of so many people. Jean getting a little drunk and giving an impromptu toast to “The biggest asshole I’ve ever met and also maybe somehow the most - hold it - hold up - hold on - there’s a word for this - yeah, yeah, thanks Marco, trustworthy! The most trustworthy guy I’ve ever met. Well. Second-most. Sorry, Eren, Marco’s first.” Marco laughing at him and laughing at me and dragging Jean back into his seat. Sasha eating everything the buffet had to offer and Connie calling the babysitter once every hour, checking on their kid, making sure the little girl hadn’t somehow developed superhero powers while they were gone, like JackJack in The Incredibles. Petra and Auruo, happily bickering through the whole reception. Hanji, telling everyone who would listen about a new disease she’d discovered. Erwin, passing his plates to Mike, asking him to smell them for poison - he was sitting next to Hanji and “can’t be too careful.” Nanaba telling Hanji to quick, slip something deadly into Erwin’s drink. Gunther and Erd, wordlessly smacking Levi on the back. Isabel and Farlan, ambushing him in a hug while apologizing to me for monopolizing my husband. Ymir getting drunk and finding out that she’s got a lot in common with Jean, mainly a love of shitty beer. Christa threatening to cut Ymir off if she doesn’t dance with her at least once.

Everyone.

 

And life goes on.

 

I walk around in my underwear. Levi joins me, some days. Sometimes we order Chinese food and sit on the couch and binge-watch TV shows until we’re too emotionally exhausted to move.

 

Sometimes I wonder if it would be healthier for us all to get together. Talk about what happened. Cry on each other’s shoulders and let it out.

But most of the time, I know it wouldn’t.

We all know what happened. Whether or not it was on purpose or an accident, whether or not we were forced or went willingly, whether we fought or gave in - none of us want to know. We all want to believe that everyone involved did the best they could. We all want to believe that none of us ever willingly hurt each other. We all want to believe that there was nothing more we could’ve done.

We all know that’s probably false.

But I will not be the one to look Bertl in the eye and tell him he shouldn’t have kicked through Wall Maria.

 

Work drags. Christa makes it bearable, popping up over the wall between us to tell me customers are stupid before dropping back down into her chair.

 

Sometimes I hear people talk about making grand gestures for a loved one - writing their name in the sky, taking them on an extravagant honeymoon, taking them on a trip to Cancun on a whim.

When I think of the things Levi’s done for me, it’s the little things that come to mind.

Him remembering how I like my coffee. Waking me up with kisses in the morning. Going grocery shopping so I don’t have to. When we moved into our new house, out in the middle of nowhere, and I was distracted by the stars I hadn’t been able to see from our apartment, and he dug a blanket out of one of the boxes and lay on the ground next to me and stargazed instead of unpacking.

 

Jean visits when he gets a new violin. He shoves his old one at me and tells me it’s mine.

He gives me my first-ever violin lesson.

Levi puts his headphones in. I’m tempted to do the same. The violin sounds beautiful in Jean’s hands, and a little like a choir full of skeletons screaming in mine.

I improve steadily. Slowly, but steadily.

 

Sometimes, I’m struck by my goals from my past life. Kill all the titans. Such a lofty goal. Arrogant, almost, to think that I could do it. Meanwhile, in this life, my main goal is to get home. To sit out on the porch with Levi and stare at the stars. To go to the beach with Armin and Mikasa and stare at the sea. To tag along with Jean and Marco when they go see an orchestra play at the local theater and listen to the First Violin rise above the other instruments. To learn Morse Code so Christa and I can talk through the walls instead of over them.

 

Mikasa calls me up one day and tells me she’s engaged to Annie.

I’d love to be shocked - I didn’t even know they were dating - but I’m not. Dating or not, they remind me of myself and Levi. There’s a certain level of comfort there that can’t be hidden or faked.

Their wedding is tiny. Their guests consist of me, Armin, Reiner, and Bertl. I’m not surprised. There’s a huge number of people who care for them, but not many that they care for so much they’d share their wedding with them.

The fact that Mikasa chopped Annie’s fingertips off and stopped her from escaping doesn’t seem to phase either of them.

 

I wake up earlier and earlier as I age, and I find that Levi does too. He says he always did - he just didn’t want to get up and disturb me.

We share those small hours of the morning, now. We rarely talk. I get the newspaper while he makes coffee.

He reads the newspaper. I read it online on my phone.

The kitchen slowly grows dim, moving out of the darkness of night and into the gloaming grey of the morning pre-sunrise. It slides from there into rosy light and from there into bright, warm, yellow.

 

The hallucinations fade away as I age. Levi’s stopped years ago. I’m glad. They made life more painful than it had to be.

 

The time comes when getting out of bed is hard for Levi. Every part of his body creaks and cracks when he moves.

So sometimes, instead of getting up, we lie in bed. We watch the sunrise from under the blankets.

 

I don’t know if we’ll reincarnate again. I don’t know if there have been times between the first time and this time, times we just weren’t allowed to see. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my friends again, or if I’ll ever see Levi again. I have no idea if I’ll ever watch another sunrise. If I’ll ever struggle through life again.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

But I’m glad I got this chance.

I’m glad I got these little moments. These small hours. The tiny ones in which nothing big or great happens, in which I’m not filled with intense joy or rage or hatred or love. In which I’m just happy. Content. Alive.

I’m glad I got the moments I missed when I was Humanity’s Last Hope.

I’m happy I’m not a hero.

I wrap an arm around Levi’s frail waist and I am content. 


End file.
